Crash Course on Creativity Part 2

I pulled out my copy of “Lovingly Georgia: The Complete Correspondence of Georgia O’Keeffe and Anita Pollitzer” you wrote about in your previous post and decided I would read it again. I am looking forward to reading their wisdom on maintaining a creative life.

I have a brief thought about competition and partners for you to think about….

One of the declarations at the Artist U workshop I attended was “competition is good for us!”. You might say “Whaaaaa? There are so many people who are doing things so much more interesting and better and smarter than me and to top it all off- getting all the resources and attention that I am secretly jealous of”. Er, maybe that is what I am mumbling under my breath….. BUT, think of those competitors in a different light.

They are opening possibilities.

Their success is good for us/me.

Our competitors can be partners.

Where would we be as women if we didn’t have Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Marie Curie (if you want to read a GREAT historical fiction novel on the first two women, read Sex Wars by Marge Piercy…so good). Or how about women artists who have paved this path for us right now like Judy Chicago, Artemisia Gentileschi, or Frida Kahlo (to name a few).

What if the artists we are admiring (i.e. competing with) are viewed as partners for success? What if we see one another as partners for success? What if we create a big dream and helped one another achieve it? What if we didn’t ask for help from galleries and the marketplace, but from other artists and creative businesses?

We can reach out for help- without apologizing for it. You hesitated to ask for my help with your open studio. This is a good lesson in that you should have just given me a list of what you needed- without apology or guilt. I want you to succeed and so do so many others. I think we reach and reach and reach then give those partners some love back. Those partners may be our competition, but so what? Let’s think of all of us as working together to push away the stereotypes of what being an artist is and start dancing!